English Literature Journals
Please share your experiences working with these journals! Feel free to add other journals to the list. Try to stick with this format: each journal should be separated by dashes, and responses under each journal should each have their own bullet. *I moved Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Exemplaria, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, MFS, New Literary History, PMLA, Renaissance Quarterly, Representations and Speculum to the Comparative Literature/Theory page, since they do not focus exclusively on literature from England. Back to Literary Studies Journals ---- ''ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews'' *This journal has a very fast turnaround time. Highly recommend. ---- ''Cahiers Élisabéthains'' * ---- ''Chaucer Review'' *Quick turnaround (less than 4 months)--a revise and resubmit. Revised according to editors' and readers' suggestions, returned essay less than 4 months later, was rejected. Revise and resubmits are apparently sent to a third reader who hasn't seen the earlier essay or the previous readers' comments, so be careful about how you revise. ---- ''Early Modern Literary Studies'' *Probably 3 months from submission to decision, and good, decently detailed and helpful reports. *Did you get a confirmation of your submission when you sent it in originally? ---- ''English'' (Oxford journal) * ---- ''ELH: English Literary History'' *Submitted an article in May 2011 and received a rejection in December 2011. The editor shared only the reader's suggestion that the article would be appropriate for a more specialized journal. *Submitted an article in June 2011 and received email notice of acceptance in September 2011 (on a weekend!). Article was accepted as submitted, no revisions were requested (although I do understand from others that it is common for'' ELH'' to request some revisions before final acceptance). No reader reports were provided, but it is my understanding that ELH ''does not usually provide reader comments (part of the reason why they have a quick turn-around time). Was told to expect 12-18 months between submission of final article manuscript and publication. *Received rejection about three months after submission, with brief (one sentence) but helpful statement about reasons for rejection. *Rejection three months from submission; as in the cases of the posters above, the response came on a weekend, and with the suggestion that I send it to a more specialized journal. *Rejection three months from submission. No reasons, no readers' reports. *Rejection after 3 months from an associate editors. Same as above: no reasons, no readers' reports. *Rejection after 4 months from senior editor, with an attached reviewer's paragraph explaining rejection. ---- ''ELR: English Literary Renaissance *Submitted an article in 2008 or so, got a positive rejection letter with 2 good readers' reports w/in 6 mos. Then in 2010, emailed the editor to see if they would be willing to read a new version of the essay. They said yes, so I sent it in sometime over the 2010-2011 Winter break.. Received word in April or May 2011 that they liked my essay but had not been able to decide if they wished to include it, and that they would be in touch in the fall. Sept. 2011 they email me to say that they have accepted the article for publication in the 2013 volume, and included 2 reader's reports with suggestions for revision. *Submitted an article in Oct. 2011, and received a prompt confirmation letter that they had received it. Now it's practically August 2012 and I've heard nothing from the journal. Sent the editor an e-mail over a month ago politely requesting a status update and updating my contact info because I've changed institutions. I did not receive a reply to this e-mail, and am now unsure what to do. Send another e-mail? A colleague suggested that I call the journal, but I'm hesitant to do this. *To the above: I've been given to understand that e-mail is defnitely not the best way to contact the editor at this journal. I was in a similar situation, and I was advised to snail mail, and I got prompt responses. **Thanks -- I will try snail mail. **Update: Received a rejection originially mailed to my old institution months ago (not quite sure why I never received it) after requesting an update via snail mail. The two readers' reports will be useful for revisions, but I can't read them in entirety because they were sloppily photocopied (the originals must be lost in the mail somwhere). I don't think anyone is to blame for the snafu, but it's a little frustrating that I could have revised the article and submitted it somewhere else weeks or even months ago. Lesson to anyone submitting to this journal (confirming above advice): DO NOT COMMUNICATE WITH THIS JOURNAL VIA E-MAIL! *My experience was that they were completely unprofessional. Long (six month?) wait for any cofirmation that the article had even been sent to readers, then they took a couple more months to reject the article. One reader rejected the article but had clearly, even humorously, not read the essay very carefully, if at all. This turned out to be a joke and waste of my time. *I sent an article back in 2008, and although I got a fairly prompt typed-written notification that they had received the article, it took 9 months for me to get back a single reader's report where the reader didn't even get my name right (gave me 3 different last names at various points) and basically didn't say anything about the argument, research, structure, etc. Instead, the reader quibbled with the wording of one of my footnotes for a few paragraphs. I submitted originally because I heard that they provided careful and thoughtful readers' reports, but this was not my experience at all. ---- ''James Joyce Quarterly'' * Very slow. ---- ''Journal of the Wooden O Symposium'' * ---- ''Milton Quarterly'' *Submitted an article for review in August, 2011. As of March 2012, no word. Contacted editor in July 2012; was told that they were still waiting on one of the reader's reports. No contact since then. Emailed in Sept 2012 to check up on status. Currently awaiting response. ---- ''Milton Studies'' * ---- ''Modernism/Modernity'' *received rejection after 9 months with minimal (one short paragraph) reader review. ---- ''Nineteenth-Century Prose'' * ---- ''Notes and Queries'' *One-sentence rejection email with no explanation for rejection and no commentary on emailed submission. 3 month review period. ---- ''Novel: A Forum on Fiction'' * ---- ''Review of English Studies'' *Article submitted received a revise-and-resubmit exactly one month later; I was very happy with the turn-around time. Comments from period editor were useful and polite; comments from outside reader were a mix of useful and condescending. After revising, the outside reader again required more revisions three months later. The tone of his/her comments was again sarcastic and several of the suggestions were truly ill-advised (calling for poor stylistic changes and factually incorrect changes). After selectively revising a second time and resubmitting, I was notified within two weeks that the piece was accepted. Be aware that Oxford journals use an online submission system that is cumbersome, form heavy, and often cryptic. *Annual RES best graduate student essay prize is worth noting. If you are a graduate student submitting to RES, it is certainly worth a shot: I was lucky enough to win it a few years back and found that it gave my essay a higher profile on my cv, which can't hurt. Like another poster above, I found the turn-around prompt. *Submitted article for essay prize; received very quick, kind rejection note with helpful feedback. ---- ''SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900'' *I have not submitted here, but I have heard from others that SEL can take a verryyy looonnng time to get back to you with a response (like over a year). *My submission was accepted exactly 4 months after it was received, as indicated on their website. Over two years before it's slated for publication, but that's because it's basically an annual (SEL's four annual issues each cover a different sub-field). Based on my experience, I would highly recommend submitting here as long as you don't mind a long wait between acceptance and publication. *I had an article under review at this journal for 2 years. I kept in touch with the editor, who kept promising that he's have something for me shortly. Eventually, I withdrew the publication. *Received a timely (ie: exactly 4 month) rejection. Be aware, however, for those who work in the early modern period: one of their reviewers uses scholarship from the 1930s and Google searches in order to vet information in submissions (which presents a real problem if you are offering them newly discovered material that contradicts older scholarship). You may want to save yourself the 4 months and send it to somewhere with a more relevant and up-to-date slate of readers. *Received a timely (4 month) request to revise and resubmit, together with a detailed and extraordinarily helpful reader report. Received a timely acceptance after revision. Great experience; kind, courteous, professional people. *I also had a long (1 year +) wait. Revise & Resubmit, but one of the reader reports was a thinly veiled ad hominem attack and not constructive at all. Would not recommend submitting here. *I submitted once (can we say how unfun paper submission is versus online?) and got a very quick (